The interpretation of
Baudrillard’s notion of hyperreality found in John Storey’s An Introductory
Guide to Cultural Theory and Popular Culture is useful here:

In the realm of the hyperreal, the distinction between simulation and the ‘real’
continually implodes; the ‘real’ and the imaginary continually collapse into
each other. The result is that reality and simulation are experienced as without
difference—operating along a roller coaster continuum. In fact, simulations can
often be experienced as more real than the real itself… (Storey 1993: 163).

For Heian Buddhists, there was no
more palpable expression—no more verifiably “real” experience—of the Pure Land
than the Firstspace created by the Phoenix Hall [add
references to Heian descriptions of the Phoenix Hall experienced as the Pure
Land]. On the basis of a notion of hyperreality, the Phoenix Hall
fits into the context of Soja’s tripartite space in the following way:

Firstspace
of the Phoenix Hall. The material space of the Phoenix Hall was a converted
aristocratic villa with additional new construction that was made to appear like
the conceived space of the Pure Land. Because the Pure Land is itself not a
material space, the physical space of the Phoenix Hall is both Firstspace and
simulation of the Pure Land.

Secondspace
of the Phoenix Hall. Conceptualizations of the Pure Land taken from sūtras,
mandalas, and other Buddhist sources—as well as architectural styles
appropriated from Heian period secular aristocratic and temple buildings—are
central design elements of the Phoenix Hall and constitute its Secondspace.

Thirdspace
of the Phoenix Hall. The lived experience of Japanese Buddhist monastics and
laypersons of the Phoenix Hall as Pure Land.

Conclusion: The Production of Simulated Space

The simulated
Pure Land made material in the Phoenix Hall appears to mimic the conceived space
of the Pure Land. Conversely, however, we can conceive that the Phoenix
Hall/Pure Land creates the reality of the Pure Land. Despite appearances to the
contrary, the Phoenix Hall was not simply an opulent expression of religious
fervor; it also created the model of a “real” Pure Land which in fact had no
independent or original material reality. “Simulation,” as Baudrillard argues,
“threatens the difference between ‘true’ and ‘false’, between ‘real’ and
imaginary’ (Baudrillard 1983: 5). The simulation of the Pure Land at the Phoenix
Hall concretized the Pure Land’s reality; it did not represent an otherwise real
material space. To return to Baudrillard’s conception of hyperreality, the
physical presence of the Phoenix Hall blurred the distinction between reality
and simulation of the Pure Land. This blurring allowed the Phoenix Hall to be
experienced as Pure Land Firstspace. This perceptual shift is underscored by
aristocratic Heian Buddhist accounts of experiencing the Phoenix Hall as the
Pure Land itself.

What was
created in Heian Japan at the Phoenix Hall was, to use a contemporary term, a
virtual world. There was no real Firstspace, so Firstspace was manufactured.
Pure Land simulation masqueraded as an actualization of the Pure Land, a
religious goal accessible to everyone regardless of social class (itinerant
monks had begun preaching this starting at least a century earlier). Yet, in a
society as hierarchical as Heian Japan, the simulated space of the Pure Land was
never equally accessible across class boundaries and hence the Phoenix Hall/Pure
Land afforded power only to those aristocrats with access to this space. The
actual situation was that the space of Amida’s paradise was experienced as
exclusive to aristocrats, appropriated for something other than egalitarian
purposes.

Thus, there were
important political and ideological implications to the creation of a Pure Land
Firstspace. In the late Heian period, high-ranking aristocrats were in control
of fabricating simulations of the Pure Land. No other class had the financial
means and religious connections to be able to support such a venture. This
hyperreal Pure Land then became the site for, inter alia, demonstrations
of wealth, displays of religious and secular power, and the reinforcement of
social hierarchies. For instance, Heian aristocrats no doubt experienced the
Phoenix Hall differently from the laborers who built it and then were restricted
in their access to this space once construction was completed. Flanagan makes a
similar point about the distinction between Firstspace and its Thirdspace
experience in his discussion of a Sinai Bedouin and an Israeli guide: “The two
men lived in the same physical Firstspace zone, but their Thirdspaces differed
substantially” (Flanagan 2001).

The Pure Land/Phoenix
Hall masked the hierarchy of relations characterizing Heian period society and
reinforced social stratification. The ostensibly egalitarian Pure Land was
rendered hierarchical through its material realization as the Phoenix Hall, a
space restricted on the basis of social ranking. Yorimichi effectively
appropriated the Secondspace and Thirdspace of the Pure Land by crafting the
Phoenix Hall as Pure Land Firstspace. This manifested Firstspace then served as
the ground for spatial practices involving religious rituals and other actions
that not only reinforced the perception of the Phoenix Hall as Pure Land
Firstspace but engendered and perpetuated the inequities of power relations
between aristocrats and others.

I stated in
the Introduction to this paper that I hoped to raise questions about the
relevance (or not) of contemporary spatial theories to religious studies
generally. It seems to me that the issue of spatiality is a critical piece
missing from most analyses of religious data. This is an area of inquiry rich
with possibility currently in the early stages of scholarly exploration. I have
tried to sketch out here a view of a Japanese religious space in context, one
that takes seriously three theoretical claims concerning space discussed by
Kevin Hetherington, a sociologist, in his The Badlands of Modernity:
Heterotopia and Social Ordering. In this volume, Hetherington reviews recent
literature on spatiality and locates these studies within a model of space as
socially produced. He extracts three contextualizing positions in this
literature:

1.“space and place are not treated as sets of relations outside of society
but implicated in the production of those social relations and are themselves,
in turn, socially produced.”

2.“space and place are seen to be situated within relations of power and in
some cases within relations of power-knowledge”

3.“spatial relations and places associated with those spatial relations are
seen to be multiple and contested. A place does not mean the same thing for one
group of social agents as it does for another” (Hetherington 1997: 20)

It seems to me that these three
claims have to be considered in any analysis of religious space if we are to
move beyond an Eliadean view of religious space as merely “sacred.” I could
argue, for instance, that the Phoenix Hall qua Pure Land is a sacred space in
Eliadean terms (and with all the ramifications of such a claim), but to do so
would miss the opportunity for analyzing space-in-context as Hetherington
suggests. It is this same concern for space-in-context that inspires Soja to
view critical spatiality through a radical postmodernism. As noted above, the
example of Pure Land space and its power implications in Heian Japan offers
evidence of the multiplicity of spatial contexts and experiences, and the need
for trialectic and other approaches to religious space.

Finally, tripartite
theories of space lead us in fruitful directions for spatial analysis, but, as I
have proposed in this paper, not all religious space falls neatly into this
threefold schema. Soja and others have extracted their theories primarily from
the discipline of geography. The study of religious space—with its combinations
and continuums of real and imagined spaces—seems, at least in some instances, to
require other theoretical frames through which to view religious data. To that
end, I have attempted to offer one area of religious spatial inquiry—an absent
Firstspace/a present simulated space—for further theorization.

Bibliography

Berquist, Jon. 1999. “Theories of Space and Construction of
the Ancient World.” Paper presented in the Constructs of the Social and Cultural
Worlds of Antiquity Group.
http://www.cwru.edu/affil/GAIR/papers/99papers/jberquist.html

Boer, Roland. 2000. “Henri Lefebvre and the Production of
Space.” Paper presented in the Constructions of Ancient Space Seminar.
http://www.cwru.edu/affil/GAIR/papers/2000papers/Boer.html

Braun, Willi, and Russell T. McCutcheon, eds. 2000.
Guide to the Study of Religion. London and New York: Cassell.

During, Simon, ed. 1993. The Cultural Studies Reader.
London and New York: Routledge.

Eliade, Mircea. 1954. Cosmos and History: The Myth of
the Eternal Return. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Eliade, Mircea. 1959. The Sacred and the Profane: The
Nature of Religion. New York and London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

Flanagan, James W. 1999. “Mapping the Biblical World:
Perceptions of Space in Ancient Southwestern Asia.” Paper presented in the
Humanities Research Group of the University of Windsor.
http://www.cwru.edu/affil/GAIR/canada/Windsor/Windsor.htm